Danger in paradise

The murder of a young holiday-maker on an idyllic Thai island in January was horrifying, but a seemingly rare occurrence. Not so. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark uncover the seething resentments on Koh Samui that have sparked a violent crime wave that locals and westerners do their best to conceal

There are beguiling days on Koh Samui when a collar of mist descends on the Thai island, making it difficult to tell the sea from the sky. Fishermen call these "days without prayer", when no one can trust what they see and boats dare not set sail.

On a day such as this, at 10am, on January 2, a tourist thought he spotted a body bobbing in the water. An hour passed before a local jet-ski instructor dragged the corpse to shore. By the time Britain woke up seven hours later, the dead body had been identified as missing 21-year-old backpacker Katherine Horton, from a small town near Cardiff. Beaten into submission with a parasol on Samui's Lamai beach the previous evening, Horton had been raped twice before being left to drown in the sea near to the resort where she had been staying. Footage of her body, sprawled in the sand in a green dress, played across the nightly Thai TV news. The Horton case became a front-page story in the UK, too: murder on an idyllic holiday island.

The murder hunt moved at lightning speed. Two impoverished Thai fishermen were swiftly arrested, interrogated, tried and convicted. The men - Bualoi Posit and Wichai Somkhaoyai, aged 23 and 24 - were sentenced to death on January 18, the day after Katherine Horton's funeral took place in the village church at Llanishen, Wales. Today they are still on death row, awaiting an appeal hearing. Not against conviction - their lawyers will argue that their lives should be spared since both men readily confessed.

The Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a millionaire entrepreneur, publicly thanked the detectives for solving the crime so speedily, paying them a bonus of £1,500. The Horton killing was aberrant, he proclaimed; and, as a further reassurance to tourists, Samui's three most senior police officers were removed and replaced with veteran detectives sent by Bangkok. Security on the island was to be overhauled, with the introduction of CCTV, extra police patrols and new police stations, at a cost of 107m baht (£1.6m). And a new governor was brought in from the mainland, too. By February, life had returned to normal on an otherwise idyllic isle.

Or that was the image presented. In fact, behind the reorganisation lies a disturbing story. The Horton murder, according to Thai academics and civil servants who have submitted a confidential report to their government, was the culmination of "a social and moral implosion" on Koh Samui, an island that, over the past two decades, has been transformed from a pirates' hideaway, home to coconut farmers and peripatetic fishermen, into a raucous engine of capitalism. More than a million tourists visit every year - at least 60% of them from the UK - overwhelming the local population of 30,000 islanders. And a change in Thai property laws has led to many of these foreigners, or farangs, staying on.

In the past four years, Samui has been put up for sale and the farangs, taking advantage of preferential exchange rates, have bought more than one third of the island, investing in bars, hotels, restaurants and villas. However, according to the unpublished Thai report, fewer than 20% of islanders have benefited from the boom, leading to "explosive tensions" between rich and poor residents, mainland Thais and foreigners.

These tensions, the report's authors say, have triggered a succession of violent assaults and robberies, break-ins and acts of vandalism - crimes of opportunity and spite predominantly aimed at tourists. Island families who have done well from the sell-off and incoming foreign businessmen have become embroiled in a rats' nest of competing interests.

The illusion of a pristine and bountiful retreat is maintained by the local authorities, the police and mayor's office, and local businesses, both Thai and western, lest reports of violent incidents damage the tourist trade. When the Samui Express, an English-language paper, dared debate the Horton murder, it was harangued by readers who demanded the paper "print something nice" instead. Refusing to be bullied, the same paper reported that a Thai had raped a second British tourist, Corrie Ann Holt, on January 21. Although this was unconnected to the Horton murder - the two fishermen responsible had already been sentenced by the time the second woman was attacked - the similarity of the crimes, within three weeks of each other and on neighbouring beaches, raised questions about the safety of tourists on Samui, the paper suggested. However, readers of the Samui Express, organised into a group calling itself "the angry residential bar owners", demanded the paper stop reporting criminal incidents, accusing it of being "as bad as the rapists" in damaging local business.

In Koh Samui's police headquarters, a lengthy, ink-spattered crime sheet, covering the months before the Horton murder and the weeks after, tells the real story. Of the various acts of violence and revenge, only the Horton case has been publicised and solved. On October 20 2005, an Irish woman was raped in the toilets of a club by men who had befriended her on the beach - there were no witnesses. On December 10 2005, a British holiday-maker was shot in the leg while drinking at a crowded tourist bar. That same evening a Thai policeman was gunned down when he went on his bicycle to quieten a rowdy pub - the patrons didn't notice.

On December 29 2005, a Scottish holiday-maker was beaten with an iron stave by a security guard weary of western revellers. Five days later the Scot was accused by local police of a rape he didn't commit. On January 4 this year, a 12-year-old girl was raped beside the Sila Ngu temple, her parents withdrawing the case after being "humiliated" during the investigation. The "unnatural death" on January 16 of 56-year-old Briton Alan Jones, in his house on Samui's Lamai beach, was logged by police with no conclusions as to the cause. Three days later a Swedish tourist was sexually assaulted behind a beach-front bungalow - insufficient evidence was found to pursue the case. On January 29, a Thai coconut-seller was killed in a drive-by shooting - neither gunman nor gun has been found. Numerous disappearances and brutal assaults are registered only as numbers, and all this in a place slightly smaller than the Isle of Wight.

Three months on from the Horton murder, it is business as usual on Samui. Tourist numbers are improving, and any patch of building land not already sold is up for auction. All around is construction on an island that has yet to build a sewage system.

The manner of your arrival on Koh Samui sets the tone. If you fly, Bangkok Airways charge among the highest fares in Asia. The alternative is by sea. On March 27 last year, an overloaded ferry sank off Samui, killing 14 tourists. New passenger safety rules were introduced. On February 14 this year, a marine police launch pulled alongside a local ferry and found that, although the vessel was registered to carry 33 passengers, there were 163 paying tourists aboard.

Everything bows before profit on Samui. Even the death of Katherine Horton was reduced to a sum. Local tourist chiefs, who joined village head men clutching joss sticks and flowers in a memorial service on Thong Krut beach, could be heard only hours later calculating that the murdered British student had cost Samui 150m baht (£2.2m) as British visitor numbers had immediately slumped by 30%.

Sakchai Chaitawat, head man of Baan Harn village, close to where Horton was last seen alive, was listening to his ham radio on the day her body was pulled from the sea. "I heard what Samui detectives were saying and it made me feel bad," he says. "The officer wasn't interested. He said to his men, 'We should say it was a drowning.' 'Maybe we could say the girl fell off the rock.' " Sakchai, who also edits a local newspaper, says no one - especially those who had investments in tourist reports - wanted to look too deeply into the murder.

In the days after the death, the Samui police put forward several theories. First there was no rape at all. Then it was four Bangkok guys who roared away from the scene on motorbikes. Later it was a Thai waiter from the mainland. And then - before finally arresting the two fishermen - Samui police falsely named as a suspect a Scottish IT consultant, Callum MacDonald, who had dinner with Horton only hours before she disappeared.

Three months on, MacDonald is, perhaps surprisingly, still in Thailand. When he arrived last December, it was the first time he had left Europe. "I originally thought Samui was like a small Scottish island: naive, even innocent, and friendly. I don't feel like that any more," he says. After Horton vanished, MacDonald watched as potential evidence was ignored. "All of the other tourists staying at the resort went," MacDonald says. "No statements were taken. The crime scene was not secured. Then, as one of the only foreigners left, I found myself accused of raping Kath. I couldn't believe it."

Eventually, the Thai prime minister sent a police investigation team from Bangkok. The detectives captured the fishermen who raped Katherine Horton (using DNA evidence recovered from her body), but numerous other crimes were left no nearer a solution.

One of these involved American engineer Kris Perkins, who's been running a bar in the main beach resort of Chaweng since 2003. He was critically injured when he was shot twice by a Thai gangster after remonstrating with rowdy party-goers at a guesthouse above his bar. His is an archetypal Samui story. We traced Perkins to Houston, Texas, where he is still recovering from injuries that have left him partially paralysed and owing £30,000 in Thai hospital bills. The shooting happened last March and Perkins has spent a year trying to get the Samui police to investigate. "I have never seen a crime report. I have no case number," he says. "The island did not want to confront what happened to me."

Perkins began to dig. He discovered that the gunman was from a well-connected Samui family and went by a gang name. The Thai police's Crime Suppression Bureau has him listed as a convicted killer. In December 2005, the gang member was suspected of shooting dead a 33-year-old Thai policeman (a British national was caught in the crossfire, taking a bullet in the leg); he was briefly arrested, then released again.

Colonel Chakkrit Srisuwan has not had a day off since he was sent by Bangkok on January 21 to take over policing of Samui, his predecessors having been accused of dragging their feet in the Horton inquiry. We ask him what has gone wrong on the island. "I am the new broom," is the only answer he will give. "I say to my men when I arrive, 'Know one thing: I am the big mafia. I got the gun. I am the law and the authority.' I say: 'I come here not to bargain or to kill you, but to tell you we are all here to serve Thai people and farang. The old system is not the right way.' " His patter flows like that in a Jackie Chan movie. In the past, some crimes have been dealt with more vigorously than others, he concedes. "I have been told by the big boss that every new case on Samui is important. But farangs are to get special attention."

We mention Perkins, who could get no police attention, and MacDonald, who got too much. "Tell them to call me. Happy to talk. I sort things out." The colonel's mobile phone rings. We hear an irate voice shouting on the other end of the line. The colonel is ostentatiously polite. As the voice on the other end gets louder, the colonel's smile vanishes. "You talk to me like hell, man," he yells into the handset. "I am not servant." He flings the phone into a drawer. "Italian. Complains at the noise on Chaweng beach. If you want quiet, move to the jungle."

The colonel composes himself. Can we talk about some other cases? We ask about Corrie Ann Holt. The 18-year-old student nurse from Cumbria says she was drugged and carried from the Green Mango Bar, in Chaweng, by two men who raped her on the beach in the early hours of January 21. "Man, I've been working like a dog. Holt was my first case, 4am the day I arrived on the island. I went to her and brought her here. But she drunk, man. She could not speak. They come here. They party. Fall in love. And come to me when it go wrong."

We tell the colonel that in an interview with a British newspaper, Holt waived her right to anonymity to accuse the police of trying to persuade her to drop her case. The colonel is outraged. She said her drink was spiked, and there is reportedly CCTV footage from the Green Mango Bar showing Holt being carried out by two men, we point out. Has he been sent to Samui with orders to downplay crimes against tourists? "Hey, I'm losing my mind," he says by way of reply. "I have headache. Many crimes to solve. I've a corpse lying on the beach right now." We're startled. A 27-year-old man from Finland has just been discovered outside the Chaweng House Hotel, naked, with his right wrist slit. "Just another suicide," the colonel says with certainty.

If Colonel Chakkrit Srisuwan is serious about understanding what's happening on Koh Samui, he will have to get close to the old order that runs the island. Families control almost everything here and among the most influential are the Poonsawats, a tight-knit clan with relatives spread across the island. Khomsan Poonsawat runs the Muay Thai Boxing Stadium, at Chaweng resort. When we arrive, he is getting ready for a fight, the knock-out Palangchai Superbout, "the world's most devastating martial art". As the first bout gets under way between two greased-up fighters, blood and sweat rains down and the spectators erupt.

A champion is declared, a fist-full of envelopes crammed with money is distributed and we approach the man in black. Khomsan is the third of four brothers who, we have been told, between them control a sizeable share of the Thai-owned businesses on Koh Samui. Khomsan gestures for us to sit beside him. As a steady stream of Samui hard-men get on their knees before him, we ask if the Poonsawat family is happy with the transformation of the island. He roars: "We made the transformation. So you asking me if I like what we do? We can't worry about there being too much business. Because we like too much business."

From an early age Khomsan and his brothers set their sights higher than picking coconuts. "We noticed western backpackers arriving on the island," he says. "We opened a screen-printing shop, making T-shirts." They moved into running beach raves in the 80s and 90s, attracting an underground following among travellers and clubbers. Eventually the Poonsawat brothers saved enough money to build one of the first tourist resorts on Chaweng beach. They began to buy land from other Samui families. "We have the shooting range. Shops. Three nightclubs. My brother does all-night Escape parties. Now we go upmarket. Opening spas."

Does the family have a problem with foreign investors coming here? He smiles. "I understand how things work. Westerners need help. We can work together." Is it true that a local mafia runs everything on the island? "What is mafia?" he asks. "Family. That's all. You see everything here as chaos and ugly. But I love the downtown. If you don't like, just go somewhere else. We do not want anything to change. No need. We do not need more police, lawyer or busybodies from Bangkok. Money and control do not go together."

Outside, on Chaweng strip, it's business as normal. There are no police to be seen and who among the shoppers and barhoppers knows that, on average, every month on this seemingly peaceful and tiny island there are three murders, three rapes and at least eight violent assaults? Loud-speaker trucks advertise the night's entertainment: "Foam Party. Strongbow 150 baht (£2.20). Ladeees free." Farangs come out of bars and climb on to hired scooters. Down a dark side alley, touts lunge and catcall while behind them boy-girls and girl-boys swing lazily around greasy poles. Down on the beach, Thanawat Chotchuang, of the Samui Rescue Service, is heaving the Finnish suicide case off the beach and into his body wagon.

Thirty years ago Chaweng was a strip of coconut plantation fringing a white sand beach that stretched for miles. When westerners first discovered Samui in the mid-1970s, they came by boat and ate freshly-caught fish, which they grilled on the beach. Most left again at the end of the day. There was nowhere to stay. By the time island families such as the Poonsawats began constructing bamboo bungalows for backpackers in the early 1980s, Samui was best known as a stopping off point for the Full Moon parties on the neighbouring island of Koh Phangan. But after Bangkok Airways built Samui's airport in 1989, family resorts began to displace the 100-baht-a-night backpackers' lodgings.

The island's transformation into a full-scale international destination came in the late 1990s, when the development of massive hotels and spas began - largely built on other people's bad luck. A series of events across south-east Asia - burning rain forests, student riots and the toppling of President Suharto in Indonesia, the downing of a jet over northern Sumatra with the death of 234 passengers - made the region seem an unappealing destination to western holiday-makers.

Thailand seized its opportunity, launching the "Amazing Thailand" campaign on January 1 1998. A remarkably frank report on sustainable tourism for the Thai government proposed that Thailand exploit its neighbours' misfortunes and highlight how inexpensive and safe it was by comparison. The results outstripped all expectations, with international tourist arrivals increasing by 185% and spending growing by 503%. Tourism became Thailand's top foreign exchange earner, soon worth £18bn a year. And on Koh Samui profits leapt by 40%. The results of uncontrolled development at breakneck speed were disastrous for the island's natural environment and marine life. Coconuts from local plantations are now infected with red weevil, and seafood has to be imported.

Samui's future is in the hands of its new chief district officer, Decha Kungsanun, a man appointed by Bangkok, known locally as "the bulldozer". "I was shocked when I arrived," he tells us. "Crime, violence, slums, building regulations flouted, vulgar tourists, brusque Thais. The death of Horton was an embarrassment and really not a surprise. The men who did it were not from Samui. But they saw Samui as a honeypot - with no laws and morality. They would never have dared swim into a Thai village and do the same."

A lack of leadership, he continues, allowed a local mafia to run things. He was also surprised by how tourists behaved: "We allowed them to do things they would never dare do at home. A lack of respect developed on both sides." The rift between Thais and westerners is exacerbated, he says, by foreigners owning so much of Samui. "There is huge resentment among Thais that so much money is made here but much of it leaves the island."

Farang businessmen are everywhere on Koh Samui. Their faces hang from huge hoardings at traffic junctions. Their names are above bars and restaurants. They produce a library of property journals and run a plethora of charitable organisations. But it is hard to find a single foreign investor who wants to talk about crime or the embitterment of local people. Instead, the topic is how Samui is "going upmarket".

Paul Watson, licensee of Tropical Murphy's, on Chaweng, and president of the Samui Rotary Club, maintains that the murder of Katherine Horton and the Corrie Ann Holt rape were isolated incidents, blown out of proportion by the press. "We've a new police chief who I hear is very good. The Thais will sort it out. Development, too. Samui is going upmarket and we need the services to go with that. People hated me for saying it but when Tesco opened here, it was what we needed. And McDonald's. There's nothing wrong with giving people what they want."

It is hard to see Samui as a safe investment. The delicate metronomic beat of the island, the laws and customs that enmeshed it, have been thrown off kilter by the boom. For foreign investors it's simply a gamble: whether the island will be able to pull through before it falls apart. For the islanders, it's a gamble and something much more fundamental.

So far, the gamble has paid off for some of Samui's elite families. We are invited to a local wedding. The groom's family has hired a Sea Cat to ferry 400 guests to a neighbouring island. The bride is wearing a white silk dress, modelled on one she has seen in Vogue. The groom wears a cashmere suit. Through the crowd we spot the unmistakable profile of boxing promoter Khomsan Poonsawat. He winks. A vast seafront car park has been transformed into an open-air ballroom. The 100 tables are set with bottles of Johnny Walker and a legion of cooks prepares a 10-course feast.

On a table at the margins there is one group that is not drinking. There sit Colonel Chakkrit Srisuwan, the policeman brought in by Bangkok to overhaul the local force, new chief district officer Decha Kungsanun, sent in to impose order on chaos, and Sakchai Chaitawat, the outspoken newspaperman.

Phra Kru Santi Nontakun, abbot of the island's Laem Suan Naram temple, did not go to the wedding. He cannot abide the conspicuous consumption that has gripped the island of his birth. And yet his temple appears to reflect it. As the daylight fades, the temple's illuminations come on and lavish Parisian lamps cast a yellow glow on extravagant writhing nagas that protect a gigantic, garishly painted, multi-limbed Buddha.

"It's the only way to get people's attention," he says. "We need to shine more brightly than the neon lights of the bars. Lately I have been broadcasting on the radio, to reach out to everyone who has forgotten how to ask themselves, 'Where is your enough?' " His voice falls to a whisper: "I am afraid. The moral spirit of the island is already dying." The police recently had to break up a drunken knife fight between gangs of Thai and British residents in the temple yard. "I think the island is going to lose the bet with itself." He closes his eyes. "Samui people would eat their own hearts."